4/06/98:
>The following news item might interest those who maintain the position
>(often heard on this list, and often repeated at the recent PEWS
>conference) that US hegemony is virtually unchallenged and unchallengable.
M I D - E A S T R E A L I T I E S
ARABS AND IRAN CONTEMPLATE A LESS AMERICAN-
~-==============================-~
Steven Sherman
Binghamton U.
Dear Sherman,
MER reports on a sentiment of an oppressed people, we learn of yet-another
attempt at Arab unity, and even of a possible synergy with Russian arms!
_All at once_ this appears, a sudden ripple... it would need to last a
while to be even a wave, even longer to be a tide. And then _so_
fragile... so infinitely destabilizable the region remains. Consider, at
random, the Russian link in the chain: how very deeply into the pockets of
the banks, western investors, and imported campaign technicians is our
pathetic vodka swiller... HE?... _he_ kingpin the anti-systemic revolt of
the desert tribes??... hardly. Not even if he's replaced by a hardliner.
The ghost of the USSR is just that.
Meanwhile, in the US, muslim demonization propaganda continues unabated,
the pentagon increases the pressure for its next weapons test, Clinton
would take any skiff on offer in _his_ storm... all in all, "Just Make My
Day!" is the implicit answer to any real attempt at regional self-hegemony
in your friendly handy oil reservation.
Do you recall the recent SE Asia regional economic summit? All set they
were, those prosperous princes of globalization, those tigers of the
markets, those darlings of the neoliberal apologists... all set they were
to declare a new Asian agenda, to banish white-devil economic
imperialism... even, pray tell, to stand up collectively for China and tell
Admiral Uncle Sam to quit treating their waters like his holiday cruising
lake.
If there was a time for doubting continued US hegemony, that was surely the one.
What was the momentous outcome of this unparalleled choral call, from
voices of seeming substance? These fellows who can make their own weapons,
thank you... no medieval shieks, these, gloating over the baubles the
majors leave them.
They were put down by a mere switch of the spreadsheet numbers, a
decision, taken in elite western banking circles, to call their credit, to
downgrade their D&B to where six decks flooded... with a keystroke they
sunk the unsinkable.
All nations are equal under globalization, but some are more equal than
others. Four yen good, two dollars better.
I urge, nay I plead, if you genuinely want to understand what US hegemony
is about, and why regionalism and devolution just kind of seem to be
springing up everwhere, PLEASE read Samuel P. Huntington and BELIEVE WHAT
YOU READ.
He is not an analyst, he doesn't seriously try to do that any more, he is
an articulator of elite strategy, a court apologist, a reframer into
third-tier elitist terms... he puts the elite agenda on record, where it
will be read by the intended, in Foreign Affairs. As a British journal of
record recently reported, in their US Perspective feature, "Huntington's
Kulturkampf has become the sea in which Washington policy makers swim."
Regional identity and a cliquish attitude to outsiders is precisely the
formula the elite have prescribed. In their scenario-analysis
simula-parlance it's called "programmable tension", and you can see its
microcosm in China/Taiwan and in Israel/Arabs -- the one tension-cluster
being set up by the US alone, and the other a joint venture with Britain.
In disunity there is weakness, and all power goes to the broker. We all
recognize and salute this power, even as we hail Sen. Mitchell as fair
broker, or see Clinton's attention to N Ireland as being one of his few
_good_ features.
And this broker - like his mythical antecedent the Western Marshall - packs
a .45 _and_ a quick-action rifle. If the phony carrot won't do the job,
the stick is just a cruise missile away, and there are carrier task forces
always at hand... and oh, did I forget?... all those submarines that we
just never hear about anymore, except in a Sean Connery movie which
apologizes for having been written "before". *-> No weapon system of
strategic importance in the US arsenal has stood down nor been scaled below
excess-of-requirements, quite the reverse.
As regards US hegemony, you haven't seen anything yet, you've been watching
warm-up exercises, a kind of global shake-out airshow.
rkm
fwd if you like